The Cadillac
by nimmieamee
Summary: Sequel to The Summer Town. "Neat and calculating," Erskine said, starting in on his bialys. "Have you considered a partnership? A career in these things? It might suit you, once this venture is successful."


The old man went into the box, and it made him brittle and cold and frail, malleable and weak and unsuited to HYDRA. HYDRA handed him off. He was dead to them. But then later he awoke, very much the same old man (possibly even a little younger that he ought to be, given his time on the planet. An unintended consequence). He was confused for a time. In his confusion, he moved to Queens.

And a little while later he sat in a cafeteria on 23rd street and explained to Howard about the essence of man.

The cafeteria was called the Cadillac. It had tin ceilings and low-hanging glass lamps and a long wooden counter where children sat sipping very cold malts. It was best known for mediocre knishes and its name was a perfect mystery. There was nothing prestigious or luxurious or Cadillac-like about the place. It had a front of dusty windows separated by thin panes of rotting wood, the paint on the doors and all the molding was peeling, and the old drapes someone had hung all around were a frayed Victorian ice-green. The old man ordered cabbage rolls and sauerkraut and bialys, kugel and macaroons and a kind of noodle dish. He asked the waiter if Howard might have a malt.

"No, no," Howard told him. "I'm doing just fine. You don't need to get me anything."

"I know," said the old man, in that comical accent of his. "You are rich. That is why you're paying."

"Oh," Howard said. "Alright. Vanilla malt then."

They waited for Agent Carter.

This was not really her uncle, of course. But Howard still felt as though he were in the presence of family, as though she had stretched her lie and made it an improbably reality simply by willing it so. Howard had never met anyone besides himself who could do this so effectively. He did it with tools and fuses. Agent Carter did it through indiscernible means, like any good agent would.

"She's a fine girl," he told Dr. Erskine.

"You are not her type," said the doctor.

Howard had no trouble accepting this. But he had trouble believing it. He had known the agent, on and off, for four years. He found her perfectly acceptable in romantic terms, and, almost by accident, he respected her. He'd never expected to respect a woman he was attracted to. It was a wonderful combination: respect and attraction.

The waiter brought malts in tall glasses and cabbage rolls on chipped jadeite plates. Erskine dug in. The table before them was an old-fashioned dull dark wood, and there were green glass salt and pepper shakers and an octagonal bottle of ketchup that the doctor had commandeered. There was also a plain porcelain vase with a sorry handful of white flowers in it. Howard removed the flowers and upended the water into the vase on the table just beside them. Then he dug into his coat pockets and found his pocket knife and a green pin from the bank and a roll of celluloid film. The film was from a series of experiments he'd been conducting. He'd sold the experiments to the government for six times the worth of the Cadillac Cafeteria. But he'd kept the film. It was embarrassing. It showed how he'd burnt his eyebrows off.

Erskine picked up the film, stared at it, and raised an eyebrow. Howard shrugged. He took it back and cut into the film very rapidly until he made a better flower, a grey-black confection, and he stuck the bank pin in the center, and he fashioned a kind of celluloid stem, and after a moment he inserted several real white petals. Really he had created something completely new, a dead and perfect thing. But the touch of nature made it all seem acceptable, less sinister.

"Very good," said the doctor, wiping his mouth. He relentlessly criticized the Vita Rays and sent Howard all sorts of aggrieved telegrams and sometimes came by the hangar – which wasn't so far from his house – to pester Howard horribly. But the flower he liked. Howard put it in the vase.

When Agent Carter came in and saw it she said, "You have hidden talents."

"I didn't even know I could do that until just now," Howard said, falsely modest.

"How do you know it was him?" the doctor said, and then, smacking a hand against his chest, "It could have been me! Oh, I ordered you some macaroons. But get more if you like. Howard is paying."

Agent Carter did not seem perturbed by this setup. So they began to talk. Around them, the Cadillac filled with people. That was fine. They weren't talking about anyone of consequence.

"Well, look, essence or no essence—" Howard said, waving an arm, "—That's mumbo jumbo you're selling him, about inner goodness—"

"No," said the doctor, around a mouthful of noodles. "It is true. And I haven't told him yet."

Agent Carter choked on her macaroon. But she righted the matter herself in seconds, swallowing with ease. She said, amazed, "You haven't told him? About all the risks?"

No one had told Howard about Johann Schmidt's new face. No one had told Howard about the serum's potential monstrous effects. Not until about a year ago. It didn't matter to Howard. He was the Vita Rays man, the man who built the tank and measured out the best way to convert it into a cremation chamber if it came to that. If the serum side of things should fail, it was not Howard's responsibility. He wouldn't even have the right to send Erskine an aggrieved telegram about it.

But Agent Carter looked uncharacteristically unsettled. So Howard said none of this. Instead, he said, "The man's got to have all the information, doc. Otherwise how can we say he's made a choice?"

"Exactly," said Agent Carter firmly. Howard grinned, and passed her the celluloid flower. She took it but did nothing with it. She said, "It's not a real choice unless he knows what he's getting into."

"Right," Howard said. "Also, you know. Legally. I don't know that it's valid. I could ask my team about it. Although I doubt Chester's people care about that, and you've already wrangled him into it."

The doctor swallowed his noodles, shaking his head. He took a sip of his chocolate malt. He said, "No, no. He volunteered. Perhaps more times than anyone else in this country. But Chester—he is not so hot on telling him anything. And really none of the men know of this risk. There is—what is the word? Yes. A gag. I am gagged. But I don't care much for gags. So I'm wondering. Should I tell him?" Erskine raised his large brown eyes to each of them in turn, and calmly ate another forkful of noodles. Then he wiped his mouth again, stood, and said, exaggeratedly, "I must go to the Johann. I leave the matter to the two of you. Whatever you decide, I will do."  
Howard stared after him as he left. He said, "Leaves it to us? That old bundle of affectations and rudeness!"

"I heard that," called the doctor.

"You were meant to," called Howard. And then, turning back to Agent Carter, "What do we care if he tells him or not?"

But Agent Carter was very still.

Howard had always liked her because to him she seemed to have a touch of the machine. Her beautiful sensible coloring, streamlined to blend in nearly anywhere. Her carefully modulated gaze, never too passionate or too dim, always set just right. Even her voice had various settings, and she regulated them according to the situation, and when she had moments of human zeal, genuine emotion, she made them professional and crisp and rote in the face of her superiors. She had socked a man in the jaw, Howard heard, and gotten away with it despite this being very unacceptable behavior for someone of her rank. And he could believe she'd gotten away with it, because she always seemed to be following operating procedures even when she wasn't. Howard, who had always wanted to meet a machine girl like this, was filled with admiration.

So he should have liked to see her as still and unaffected as any switched-off appliance. But he found he did not.

Something was wrong.

"I agree with the doc. He's the best man for the job," Howard said slowly. "I saw the file. Chester may care about his size, but to me, that's nothing. I trust my rays. And choice or no choice, this is the only guy we've got with no family to miss him when this goes belly-up."

That seemed attractive to Howard. It seemed to minimize the suffering and, in turn, his responsibility. He was trying to make a new man for America, a man born out of a giant green machine. But if he ended up killing someone to do it, he knew it would be hard, for some time, to stare at those stars and stripes.

It would make him hard. He wasn't hard yet, but he knew he would become hard. And he sunk this knowledge deep inside him. It scared him.

"That's not why," snapped Agent Carter, turning to face him very suddenly. Howard drew back. She was every bit a human woman and not at all a machine in that instance. She was crushing the celluloid flower, and that made no sense, because it was a very pretty flower. She said, "He's the only one for the job because he's the only one with the sense God gave a walnut. Some of those men are, my apologies to their sainted mothers, complete whoresons—"

Howard leaned in again, amazed and thrilled, as his calm mechanical winter girl became a creature of the barracks: bluster and swears.

"—and the rest somewhere between pissant and useless! Some are there because they want personal glory, a few because it was that or face punishment for draft dodging. He's the only one there with any sense of duty whatsoever!"

Having said her piece, she sat back again, and took another macaroon. And then she said, more calmly, "Which, really, is all beside the point. He's our man because he's our man, not because the others are faulty. If you showed me the perfect soldier already, a decorated sergeant, I would still pick Rogers over him."

Howard stared at her. She had come out and said the name – very un-Agentlike. And now she seemed to have switched off her momentary fury and exchanged it for sudden contemplation. She said, "No, we have a problem. It needs to be him. No one else is worth the money and hope and promise put into that procedure, frankly. But of course if we tell him, he can say no."

This was no doubt what concerned Colonel Philips' people. So Howard thought on it. It seemed to him that none of this would be a problem if Peggy did not seem so determined that Rogers know of the risks. Why, he couldn't tell. Howard didn't even entertain the thought of anything romantic. He thought it must just be her natural integrity.

But then, after a minute, she said, "Well, we have to tell him. But we have to get him to say yes, I suppose."

"The night before?" said Howard.

"When it's not even really a choice anymore," said Agent Carter. "He'll have come so far."

"Stacks the deck in our favor anyway," Howard said. "Erskine can tell him without even making it seem like a choice he has."

And he felt small calm hardness come over him, and Agent Carter must have felt the same, because she stole his malt and downed it, and then looked at it in distaste, like she wished it were something stronger. When Erskine returned, they presented their solution.

"Neat and calculating," Erskine said, starting in on his bialys. "Have you considered a partnership? A career in these things? It might suit you, once this venture is successful."

It did suit them. Ensuring the right results. Experimenting with the methods. And pushing aside, little by little, any fear they might feel over the hardness coming over them, making them methodical, like machines.

Howard paid for the meal very graciously. And then he went back to his car and stared at the flag tucked next to the mirror and felt a comfort he didn't even want to acknowledge, because he could look at the flag, so he must still be an honest no bones about it genuine American. But Peggy was not American to begin with, so for her there was no false comfort in the flag. She remained at the table with Erskine and said, after a moment, "I don't want to trick him, but I don't see any other way. Those other men are just useless."

"I think they are bullies," Erskine said, still polishing off the last of the food. "And he is not. He might even be a good man. And sacrifices must be good to have any worth. Even Johann Schmidt thinks this."

"Schmidt's a Nazi," Peggy said flatly.

"In our line of work, we are not always so different from him, unfortunately," said Erskine. "But we remember that our subject is human, and we value him, and if he suffers or dies we mourn. And as long as we do that, we do not become like his people, measuring others in terms of their mechanical usefulness alone. We can be a little better. Now, come. You are still on second avenue, yes? I will walk you there. Or halfway there because then I have to get on the subway. Let's go."

Peggy was not convinced by his argument. But the funny little man, who'd emerged from his cryofreeze chamber to change the world, walked her halfway home. She asked him why he used such an affected accent – she had heard him speak perfect English on the transport across the Channel, when he'd thought no one was listening. He winked. He said that he was done with showing his hand. After all, people wanted a perfect soldier. But were they giving them that?

Peggy blinked at him.

"What use is a perfect soldier to anyone but someone who wants to make war?" said Dr. Erskine. "We want a man to end wars, not to make them. I have no use for a perfect soldier. They think they want that, I let them think I have delivered. And they think they want a good stupid cog, a little machine piece they can use, with a funny accent. So here I am. But I am not that."

He pressed the celluloid flower into her hands. She had left it at the table, but he had taken it. He nodded at her, and made a kind of unraveling motion with his hands. Then he vanished down the subway steps. So she unraveled the flower and there, inside the dead and perfect thing, she found a photo negative of Howard Stark looking silly with his eyebrows burnt off. She stopped in the street and laughed and laughed. She felt inexplicable relief. The perfect flower had within it some of the living humanity of Howard.

A short while later, the doctor was dead. But the perfect form he'd created had within it some living humanity – Steve, in fact.

* * *

This works better if you read The Summer Town.


End file.
